The pursuit of happiness: Scientists find areas of the brain linked with joy

Source: Hindustan Times

Have you ever pondered upon the little things that actually make you happy? Is it sleeping late on a Saturday night without worrying about waking up early the next day? Or is it a quiet meditation session late at night? Is it going on a shopping spree, splurging all your money or is it simply sitting down to a delicious home-made meal after a long day at work?

The answer is always subjective i.e. one person’s favourite sandwich is another person’s love for playing with babies. However, according to a Japanese study, happiness runs far deeper than commonplace culinary joys — in fact, it boils down to neuroscience and the size of a particular region in the brain.

A team of university professors in Japan examined the links between brain structure and happiness and found that happier people had a larger volume of grey matter in the precuneus, an area in the brain sandwiched between the two cerebral hemispheres that studies have linked to memory retrieval.